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MORE 

MISERIES!! 



ADDRESSED TO 



THE MORBID, THE xMELANCHOLY, 

AND THE IRRITABLE. 

By SIR FRETFUL MURMUR, Knt. 



Woes Cluster — rare are solitary ^oes 

They love a train— they tread each others heel." 



i.cHB/ 

Printed by W. Clowes, Villhrs' 5*7*1, 
FOR H^ D. SYMONDS, PATERNOSTER-^^ngftS'B 

MATHEWS AND LEIGH, 1 8 5 STRAND. 

1806. 



TO 

GEORGE COLMAN, Esq. 



Dear Sir, 

THOSE who know you, 
as we do superior beings, by their 
works only, and those who enjoy 
the happiness of your friendship, 
will, no doubt, at first, wonder that 
a book upon Miseries should be ad- 
dressed to the Author of Broad 
Grins, to one whose wit ever bril- 
liant, yet ever amiable, has so often 
augmented the felicities of life : 



DEDICATION. 

but they will immediately perceive 
how closely you are connected with 
my dismal subject, when they re- 
flect upon the misery which you 
frequently occasion ; as the Cur- 
tain descends upon your Drama, 
and they reach the last line of your 
literary productions, or the hour 
that is to separate them from your 
Society- In the name of Misery 
therefore, I address these pages to 
you, and remain, 

Dear Sir, 

Your crabbed Friend, 
F. MURMUR- 



TO THE PUBLIC. 



I THOUGHT of asking a friend of 
mine who edited one of the best cookery 
books in our language to retouch and beau- 
tify Sir Fretful Murmur's introductory 
memoir, and his letters, but as they are 
intelligible and moreover as the worthy 
Knight would not like to appear in patch 
work, though many of the pieces were of 
satin ; I have ventured to lay his effusions 
before the Public just as I received them 
from Fen Lodge. 

GILES WHIMRLE. 



MEMOIR. 



NATURE having made me one of those 
gossamer, sensitive beings upon whom the 
breath of Heaven cannot blow without 
creating more or less agitation, I amused 
myself last year with keeping a Diary of 
Vexations which I at first called Rencontres 
Facheux, till being fretted into a mortal anti- 
pathy against the French I changed that title 
for Vexatious Trifles, intending to produce 
them one day or another to prove to the 
world, by what tiny circumstances, the 
tranquillity of an irritable man may be dis- 
turbed. I moreover found that to describe 



MEMOIR. Ill 

these teasing troubles was to disarm them 
of their sting, and that one might as quietly 
contemplate them afterwards as a fine lady 
might a mouse in a cage, until she wondered 
that so diminutive an animal could have an- 
noyed her, and resolved that the scratching 
and midnight rambles of its kindred should 
alarm her no more in future. 



With all these good and right benevolent 
intentions in my head and heart, 1 found my- 
self in part delightfully anticipated by " The 
u Miseries of Human Life ; or, The Groans 
H of Samuel Sensitive, and Timothy Testy, 
(< with a few Supplementary Sighs from 
" Mrs. Testy" The writer of this whimsical 
work, has with exquisite power of elucida- 
tion delineated many of the disquietudes 
which 1 endured, but as some of that de- 
scription and others which my acquaintance* 
A 2 



IV MEMOIR. 

have suffered remained untold, I thought with 
tny friend Whimble's assistance, that I could 
send another little Catalogue of Petty Tor- 
ments into the world, that the morbid, the 
melancholy, and the irritable may taste the 
peculiar felicity of having in their possession 
a full enumeration of the various causes of 
those grievances which force us to go groan- 
ing on in our pilgrimage through life, in 
imitation of some persons who always pre- 
serve in cotton the extracted tooth, or in a 
phial the worm which have tormented them. 

This is the first time, I ever appeared in 
prints but with the terror of battalions of 
Reviewers before me who suffer nothing 
however tiny, to escape their keen and ardent 
eye, I have ventured to present my little 
volume to the Public in a dress completely 
different from that of my able forerunner in 



MEMOIR. V 

the Valhy of Tears, with my name boldly 
though not proudly affixed to it. 

I have one objection however to the work 
which 1 have spoken of with so much admi- 
ration, viz. to the numerous latin quotations 
with which it abounds, but which I candidly 
confess arises in no inconsiderable degree from 
myhaving forgotten nearly all the latin which 
the birch drove into my head, through rather 
a circuitous passage, w r hen I was at school : 
in all other respects the Miseries of Human 
Life art enviable. 

The troubles of our earthly pilgrimage 
miay be divided into three classes 

Imaginary Miseries 
Minor Miseries 

and 
Mighty Miseries, 



Tl MEMOIR. 

The first are produced by brains suffi- 
ciently distempered to cherish such shadowy 
evils without playing off any other eccen- 
tricity : they make the rich man think that 
want and famine are about to seize him, 
and the vigorous man lhat he is the victim 
of more than half the diseases enumerated 
in the Family Physician. As these miseries 
supply the want of substantial affliction, 
they cannot be too forcibly recommended to 
those who are blessed with so much felicity 
that they would be puzzled to create a wish 
which cannot be gratified. Shakespeare 
whose chequered life enabled him experi- 
mentally to characterize this sort of visi 
tation describes it to be 

•= ~" False Sorrow's eye 



which for things true weeps things imaginary" 



MEMOIR. Vll 

These visionary fiends though viewless as 
the winds are frequently as mischievous, 
and aided by a green metropolitan fog, and 
a north easter in November, are the very 
best friends that Suicide can call her own. 
Under their inspiring influence, a female 
friend of mine in the enjoyment of a pretty, 
and healthy person, and about two thousand 
per annum, took to solitary cabinet bibbing 
until mounted upon the curling vapour of 
cherry brandy and ratifia, her gentle spirit 
evaporated into thin air ; and a fine dashing 
fellow whom I have frequently met in society 
of which he was the soul, at the age of 
thirty, rich, vigorous, and for ever laughing, 
left upon his table a note addressed to me, 
declaring that the only reason which had 
induced him to place the muzzle of a pistol 
to his head was that he was completely tired 



Vlii MEMOIR, 

of the intolerable repetition of putting hi$ 
breeches on every day. 

In the fashionable world, these evils fre- 
quently deaden the lustre of the most brilliant 
candelabra, whilst those who tread the paths 
of rural humility are too industrious to b§ 
unhealthy, and have not time to be un- 
happy. However if I possessed the power 
of expelling those evils, family considera* 
tions would induce me to forbear : I have a 
first cousin who is a fashionable physician 
in high practice whose pocket imaginary 
evils fills with substantial good. 

With respect to Minor Miseries, wha 
they want in size they make up in 
number and variety. We may escape the 
pressure of gigantic evil, and never feel an 
imaginary one, but even the Child of For- 



MEMoiR. ix 

tune, and an angel in temper cannot elude 
those musquito vexations which just curl 
without agitating our tranquillity, and which 
like the Lilliputian arrows that in showers, 
made Gulliver roar with anguish, affect 
us by quick succession in close column* 
when singly they are perfectly harmless* 
Such are the miseries contained in the fol- 
lowing pages. 

The huge calamities of life require no 
illustration — may no reader of mine be ever 
brushed by the tail of their storm. 

This essay, the first I ever wrote, being 
over, I shall conclude by giving a very 
brief account of myself. 

My father and mother, weak as hot* 



X MEMOIR. 

house plants, died in the prime of life of 
declines, leaving five children, (having had 
eight) of whom I and Dorothea were left 
the shivering survivors, they dropping off in 
consumptions, generally preceded by the 
rupture of blood vessels. The founders of 
Rome were nourished by a wolf, and I owed 
my preservation to the milk of a she ass, which 
to this hour makes me reverence the long 
eared race with almost filial affection. 

I remember (always having asingular facility 
or rather genius for weeping,) that upon the 
death of a brother when I was ten years old, 
I wept so copiously, that my mother was quite 
charmed with me, praised me very much for 
it, and turning round to a sister who was one 
j-^ar younger than myself, who was amusing 
herself with her doll, said" There," Fanny, 
u look at your Brother Fretful, see how he 



MEMOIR. XI 

<c cries, and you have not shed one tear/ Upon 
which 1 roared more bitterly, and received a 
large piece of plumb cake, for the drops I 
shed upon the occasion. 

We had a cross French valet, who at the 
age of fourteen taught me the following 
Song, 

Chacun se fait des plaisirs a sa mode, 
Et selon son temperament : 
Pour moi, qui suis chagrin, et que tout incommode* 
Je prens mon divertissment, 

A gronder tant que le jour dure 
Sans pouvoir, je le jure, 
M'imaginer comment, 
Aucun se peut divertir autrement* 

It is the mind's peculiar hue, 
That tints the pleasure we pursue, 



Xll MEMOIR- 

To sad chagrin a prey, 
I find supreme delight 
In scolding, and in spite, 
And from my soul I cannot tell 
How time can e'er be pass'd so well, 
In any other way* 



At twenty I went upon the continent, where 
J found abundant sources for discontent in 
bad inns, bad roads, carriages without springs, 
and meat done to rags. Upon my return to 
England I took chambers in the Temple, 
where my spleen only en creased — every thing 
fidgetted me : in my time, it was the rage to 
give fine names to common children, and I 
lemember quitting a coffee-house in disgust, 
because I overheard the Host exclaim, 
" Anna Maria, don't you hear the pot is 
a boiling over/' Then the pomp and folly 



„ MEMOIiU X1U 

of fanerals. Although the wife of a butcher 
abhorred her husband mortally, yet the mo- 
ment the breath was out of his body, u the 
** poor dear soul must have a handsome 
* funeral, a velvet pall, with brass handles 
<c and hinges to the coffin, a tombstone and 
?< a latin epitaph." Then the rage for virtu 1 
and the enormous sums paid for monsters of 
every denomination, dried, stuffed, and float- 
ing in spirits, then the public nuisances 
of the metropolis, carts delivering or taking 
in loads in narrow -streets, and ladies culti- 
vating the science of botany by means of 
pots set on the leads two or three stories 
high, which in windy weather were fre- 
quently blown down, then to see tradesmen 
in the City clumsily imitating their superiors 
at the west end of the town, then the num- 
ber of beggars swarming in the streets 
with borrowed or stolen children, with a 



XIV MEMOIR. 

long etcetera, which soon drove me to my 
old family mansion, which I determined to 
reside in wholl) for the future, but here a 
thousand vexations pursued me, for here 
the neighbouring fens frequently produ- 
ced the ague, and Dorothea growing old 
and cross because she grew old, worried me 
to fiddle strings, for she never ceased scolding 
the maids but when she was collecting eggs, 
feeding the turkies, or assisting at the lying- 
ins, that happened in the parish. 

In time I gained a little strength, suffi- 
cient to fill, which I did with infinite dis- 
gust, the magisterial chair of our corpora- 
tion, and upon presenting a congratulatory 
address to the throne, received the honour 
of knighthood. Since which time I have 
rarely moved but to encounter something to 
wound my over sensitive feelings. 



MEMOIR. XV 

If however my irritable reader derives 
the same comfort from the perusal of my 
Supplemental Miseries, as I have done from 
the Miseries of Human Life, then will 
these sheets be like flowers in a sick chamber 
that inhale the unwholesome air and breathe 
it out again with refreshing purity. 



F. MURMUR, 



Fen Lodge, 
1« November, 1806. 



MORE MISERIES, &c 
LETTER I. 

Fvn- Lodge, 
MY DEAR WHIMBLE, 

YOU should have received my first 
Budget of MORE MISERIES earlier, but for 
a violent attack of the Ague. As often as I 
thought myself a little better, and sat up to 
copy them from my memory, a shivering fit 
came on, and shook the pen out of my hand. 
I am now, thank Heaven and the Doctor out 
again. My sister Dorothea sends her compli- 
ments — we celebrated her fiftieth year yester- 
day ; she talks of speedily changing her con- 
dition. I shall not be sorry for it, for between 
ourselves, she is not a misery to laugh at. 

Yours ever, 

F. MURMUR. 



2 MORE MISERIES. 

Sitting to have your teeth filed. 

Residing between a Stone-cutter's^ 
and an Undertaker's. 

Wearing false tops to your half- 
boots, and observing that one of 
them has slided down, just as a 
party of dashing women are passing by. 

Being obliged to press very hard 
a very damp, or what is called a puggy 
hand. 

After a violent attack of the ague, 
assisting a very short fat lady over a 
very high stile, the steps having been 
that morning stolen. 



MORE MISERIES. 3 

Being obliged to hear a very dull 
old proser relate a very long story, 
principally relating to himself and 
his own family. 

The following misery I well remember oo 
curing to a very particular and very vain 
friend of mine — its whimsicality will be au 
apology for its length. 

Sending to the Morning Post, a pa- 
ragraph written by yourself, announc- 
ing the arrival of yourself and family 
in town, in the following words; " Yes- 
S« terdayMr. and the charming Mrs. F. 
" and their three lovely and accomplish- 
" ed daughters arrived at their town 
" house in Burlington Street, from 
» % 



4 MORE MISERIES. 

" Moss Hall in Kent, which beautiful 
" retreat, has undergone some very de- 
" lightful alterations from the exqui- 
c i site designs of Mrs. F. whose un- 
" rivalled taste is the theme of admi- 
" ration amongst all her numerous 
" fashionable friends and acquaint- 
" ance." Meeting three days after 
the appearance of the paragraph an 
acqaintance, who informs you to your 
great gratification that he had read the 
arrival ■: then upon your modestly ob- 
serving thereon, that "it is a singular 
" thing, that one cannot move with- 
" out being watched by these con- 
" founded Newspaper writers, and 
" that it is really wonderful how 
" they can get the intelligence they 



MORE MISERIES. 5 

" publish." Your friend laughing 
in your face, and telling you that 
he was in the Newspaper Office to 
get a puff for a friend of his in- 
serted at the time, when your servant 
came in with and paid for the para- 
graph, which lying on the counter 
he perused and recognised to be in 
your own hand writing. 

Being requested by a foreigner who 
understands very little of the English 
language, to hear him read Milton. 

In consequence of losing all your 

money at cards in the evening, having 

none to give the servants the next 

morning, when you are quitting a 

b 3 



6 MORE MISERIES. 

house, where you are not very inti- 
mate, reconciling yourself to the shab- 
biness of the dilemma by feeling sa- 
tisfied, that you shall never enter the 
doors again ; being obliged on account 
of particular business to visit it a fort- 
night afterwards, and finding that 
the only attention the servants pay 
you, is to throw some soup acciden- 
tally over your best coat, 

7 hi; 

Haggling with a surly hackney- 
coachman for sixpence, and after he 
has driven off about a quarter of an 
hour, recollecting that you have left 
a new umbrella in his coach. 

Giving a commission to a painter, 



MORE MISERIES. 7 

leaving it to him to chuse the subject, 
and when the picture is sent home, 
wishing that he had selected any 
other. 

All your acquaintance telling you, 
that a portrait which you are aware 
is rather flattering, is not at all like 
you. 

Ordering a tumbler of warm brandy 
and water at an inn, upon putting 
your lips to it, finding it boiling hot, 
the coachman swearing that he can 
stay only one minute longer, after 
blowing the surface a hundred times, 
almost consuming your inside by 

u 4 



8 MORE MISERIES. 

the boiling draught— all this to pre- 
vent being sick. 

% Diffidently entering a full room, 
every chair occupied, and no one 
standing to keep you company. 

A friend of mine a young Barrister experienced 
the following misery. 

Not haying paid your devotions 
very ardently to Coke upon Littleton, 
or the whole law relative to the duty 
and office of a justice of the peace; 
being asked at dinner before a large 
party, by a country magistrate, your 
opinion upon a plain settlement 
point, which has bewildered him ; giv- 



MORE MISERIES. 9 

ing a wrong one, and confounded 
by being, in a knowing and officious 
manner, set right by a rip of a petty- 
fogging country attorney; who was 
honoured by an invitation to the same 
table. 

Expecting a remittance, and re- 
ceiving a stupid set of anonymous 
verses by the post. 

Receiving per post a long letter, 
written to you whilst on the continent 
by your servant, informing you who 
called, &c. Returning to England not 
having received such letter, which is 
forwarded to you in a fresh cover from 
abroad, a week after vonr arrival at 



10 MORE MISERIES. 

home, and for which you pay a mon- 
strous postage. 

Writing upon a thin sheet of paper, 
very small crumbs of bread under it. 

Dropping and leaving the address 
of a fair frail friend in the room of the 
lady to whom you are paying your 
addresses. 

Calling on a sultry day upon a 
friend who has the mania for planting 
upon him ; who marches and counter- 
marches you three or four miles to see 
his plantations, after which he irre- 
sistibly presses you to ascend a con- 
siderable eminence of ground, about 



MORE MISERIES. 1 1 

half a mile off, to see a couple of 
pines which he planted on the clay 
when his first child was born. 

Scratching and staining your hands 
in endeavouring to get blackberries 
out of reach. 

On a sultry day, putting your hand 
into your breeches pocket, in with- 
drawing the former, turning the latter 
inside out, and seeing a guinea roll 
to and vanish through a chink in the 
floor. 

At breakfast, honey dropping 
through the apertures of your bread, 
and over the sides, upon your fingers, 



12 MORE MISERIES. 

before you have half covered the 
surface. 



I was often worried in my Tour to Switzer- 
land, when as you must remember, Dick 
White travelled with me. 



Upon the continent having a com- 
panion, who does not understand a 
word of the language spoken, every 
moment asking you to translate what 
any foreigner may be saying to you, 
before he has finished. 

Shooting London Bridge with weak 
nerves, several ladies of the party. 

At a pantomime, when the entry of 



MORE MISERIES. 13 

devils is announced by a discordant 
crash of the instruments, being told 
by a man near you, that he thinks the 

orchestra not quite in tune. 

Going to dine, rather behind your 
time in a new coat, passing under a 
lamp-iron whilst a lamplighter is 
trimming a lamp, and being lubricated 
by a considerable portion of his filthy oil. 

Singing at a tavern, being fre- 
quently interrupted by a waiter en- 
tering, and exciting considerable in- 
dignation, by the clock striking the 
longest hour, by one of the party (hav- 
ing no ear for music,) cracking a 
walnut, &c. &c. 



14 MORE MISERIES. 

Explaining to your servant, who is 
any thing but a mechanic, how easy 
it is to set a steel rat-trap, and just as 
you have said to him, " There, now r , 
" you see the least thing in the world 
" will set it off!" you prove to him 
the truth of the assertion, by its un- 
expectedly embracing your own 
thumb. 

Drying a long letter by the fire, 
holding it negligently in one hand be- 
hind you whilst you are conversing 
with a friend in the room, turning 
round and perceiving it to be in 
flames* 



MORE MISERIES. 15 

Being persecuted by a female beg- 
gar along several streets, and in spite 
of a determination to give her nothing, 
being obliged to give her sixpence, 
having no halfpence, to get rid of her. 

Reading a very interesting book by 
a small green wax taper, which is in 
want of constant elevation. 

Sitting opposite to a man who 
squints, and answering him when 
he is addressing another person. 

Asking a friend whose digestion 
is very delicate, to breakfast, rolls 
doughy, no others being to be had. 



16 MORE MISERIES. 

Hearing the monotonous scream of 
parish boys and girls, singing an 
anthem. 

Carelessly stooping to blow your 
nose, coming in contact with a porter, 
carrying a high and heavy box on his 
knot, as you rise and recede, tilting 
said box over. 

Attending three country cousins 
to the Opera, who after staring at 
the figures painted upon the cieling, 
&c. &c. constantly and audibly ask 
you, who such and such a person is 
with a star, at the same time, to 
prevent all possibility of your mis- 



MORE MISERIES. 17 

taking the object, directing their 
finger towards him. 

Hearing a lovely young woman, 
whose good opinion you wish to con- 
ciliate, speak in raptures of a trinket 
which she had seen at a jeweller's, 
purchasing it for an exorbitant price, 
presenting it to her in an awkward 
way, and being mortified by a polite 
but firm refusal to accept of it. 

Having a pimple on your chin, 
covering it with sticking plaister, and 
just as you enter the drawing room, 
discovering that it curls on all sides. 

Walking down a very long street, 



18 MORE MISERIES. 

with ahead-ache, in the wake of a 
dustman's cart, the dustman constant- 
ly announcing his approach by the 
clapper of a singularly shrill bell. 

Riding to a ball in a new chocolate 
coloured coat, in which you mean to 
figure away, upon a grey horse. 

After sporting with a most en- 
chanting creature's fan just before 
the close of a ball, putting it in your 
pocket, and meaning to keep it as a 
little trophy ; receiving a message 
from the lady the next morning by 
her maid servant, requesting you will 
return it. 



MORE MISERIES. 19 

Being prevailed upon by your friend 
to accompany him to a dinner party 
to which you have not been invited, 
and upon your introduction to the 
lady of the house, she expresses her 
regret that her dining room is so smalU 
and immediately afterwards obliquely 
observes with a freezing but, that she 
can manage very well* as her brother 
can sit at a side table. 

Being bored by a man whom you 
do not like, to dine with him, and 
being nailed by his begging you to fix 
your own day. 

After the battle of the Helder or 
Seringapatam, at which you were not 



20 MORE MISERIES. 

present, walking up and down Bond 
Street with your sound arm in a s/ing, 
overhearing that you are smoaked by 
some dashing fashionables, as they 
pass you. 

Being invited to a wedding dinner, 
when you have just discovered the in- 
constancy of your wife. 

Having a boy trundle his hoop 
against your legs, in which you get 
entangled, said hoop having divers 
and sundry bits of musical tin fas- 
tened to it — clean silk stockings — 



MORE MISERIES. 2 1 

LETTER II. 

Fe?i-Lodgr 9 
MY DEAR WHIMBLE, 

DOROTHEA is still single, 
and I in consequence still very uncomfortable. 
She has had a violent dispute with Mr. Debit, a 
gentleman well known at the Stock Exchange, 
to whom she was betrothed, in consequence of 
his asserting that war to us, as a commercial 
state, was a national blessing, she maintaining 
on the contrary, that it was so extensive an evil, 
that she could prove by her diary, that even 
turkies do not lav the same number of egsrs in 
war as they do in times of political amity. 

Mr. Debit has set out for London in a tiff, no 
doubt, thinking that although war is unques- 
tionably very delightful abroad, it is far other- 



22 MORE -MISERIES. 

wise at home. What I believe has more violently 
fermented the quarrel is, that in the midst of the 
argument, Pincher, Mr, Debit's terrier, -bit 
sister's favourite Fiddy, whose breath used to 
annoy you so, of which bite she died this morning. 
All these vexations, and the increasing fidget* 
of Dorothea, are the reasons of my not having 
sent you MORE MISERIES on the third day 
after I received your esteemed favour. 
Yours ever, 

F. MURMUR. 



In sharply turning a corner, coming 
suddenly in contact with a chimney- 
sweeper, who impresses your white 
waistcoat and light coloured breeches 
with very visible memorials of the 
rencontre. 



MORE MISERIES. §3 

Passing in London under a gallipot 
garden, which you had not observed, 
projecting from a window, just at 
the moment when its rural mistress is 
watering her half withered swarthy 
sweet peas and myrtles, the mold 
hard, and the water running over into 
the street. 

When a boy — being asked if you 
will have any more mince pye, 
blushingly saying no, and immediate- 
ly afterwards wishing the mortifying 
negative at the devil. 

During a fracas in the street, be- 
tween two blackguards, praising the 
superior prowess and skill of one of 



24 MORE MISERIES. 

them, in the hearing of a man who is 
the friend of the party at whose ex- 
pence this compliment is paid, and 
who begins to defend his friend in such 
language, and with such gesticula- 
tions, that you deem it most advise- 
able to retreat from the scene of action. 

Living in chambers under a man 
who takes private lessons in dancing. 

Receiving a powerful splash upon 
your face and neckcloth, from a wheel 
of a heavily laden cart, suddenly 
dropping into a puddle of mud 
w r ater in a narrow street, and being 
attended through several streets by an 
audacious butcher's boy, who con- 



MORE MISERIES- 25 

stantly keeps a little before you, every 
now and then looking up in your face 
and laughing. 

Finding a man growing warm with 
you on some very private and delicate 
family topic in a coffee-room, where 
you observe every one is listening and 
smiling. 

As you are walking with two ladies, 
being followed by a drunken sailor 
and his trull, both talking very loudly 
and indecently, your endeavours by 
a quick step and rapid observation, 
to prevent the ladies from hearing. 



Passing Millbank at low water with 



26 MORE MISERIES. 

a party of ladies, between groups of ba- 
thers, some in the water, and some stan- 
ding or sitting upon floats of timber. 

Condemned to sit in a room where 
a piano forte is tuning. 

Sitting at dinner next to a man of 
consequence with whom you wish to 
ingratiate yourself, being told that he 
has superstitious horror of the salt 
being spilt, and from excess of cau- 
tion sending the contents of the salt- 
cellar into his plate. 

Walking arm in arm with a man of 
fashion to whom you have been re- 



MORE MISERIES. 27 

eently introduced, and meeting a 
vulgar acquaintance. 

Quitting your friend's arm for a 
fiioment, who walks on whilst you 
speak a few words on a very impor- 
tant subject to a person whom you 
meet, upon leaving him seizing 
the arm of a stranger for that of 
your friend. 

When in the act of eating with an 
excellent appetite, or in the middle 
of a very interesting conversation, 
having your health drank and perti- 
naciously repeated until you are made 
to hear and thank your tormentor, 

c a 



28 MORE MISERIES 



Seeing a cow skip and frisk, and 
affect the graces. 



Passing over a brown bladeless com- 
mons-Ditto looking upon fallow land. 

To be obliged to listen to a sharp 
savage old maid, whilst she relates the 
scandal of the village, you not being 
acquainted with any creature in it, 
except the narratrix. 

A very thin house at Drury Lane. 

Returning from a rural walk, being 
obliged to go through a lane, under 
the lee of heaps of burning weeds* 



MORE MISERIES. 29 

Forced by politeness to quit a com- 
fortable party to attend a cross old 
maid to her lodgings at the distance 
of two miles. 

Passing a narrow passage fresh 
painted. 

Putting coals on fire, the handle 

of coal-skuttle being dirty -New 

gloves on. 

The sensations of a crabbed, disap- 
pointed, hatchet-faced, skinny-lipped 
spinster, hovering upon the frontier 
of despair, upon seeing a group of 
blooming, lovely and elegant young 
women enter the room. 
c 3 



30 MORE MISERIES. 

Whilst you are making a sketch, 
having a number of impertinent per- 
sons staring behind you, until the 
crowd increases to that degree that 
you are obliged to abandon your 
subject. 

Wishing to wake early to be in 
time for a morning coach, waking, 
and upon looking at your watch dis- 
covering that you had not wound it 
up. 

Being interrogated by an irritable 
author respecting a quarto work, a 
copy of which he presented you six 
months before, and by your answers 
satisfying him, though you wish td> 



MORE MISERIES. SI 

conceal it, that you have not read one 
word of it. 

Attending private theatricals, where 
the gentlemen performers always press 
near the prompter's side, always hur- 
ry over passages in order to catch 
every word before it slips from the 
memory, one performer not giving 
the cue word, or giving it, not re- 
membered by the other who plays 
with him, standing like posts when 
they have nothing to say, and using 
their legs and arms as if they had 
been just bestowed upon them. 

In chambers, having only one 
room with a fire place, the throat of 

c 4 



32 MORE MISERIES. 

the chimney perpetually disgorging 
large volumes of smoke, the blacks 
falling about you as thick as snow, 
until your eyes are sore, opening the 
doors and windows and perishing 
with cold in the front of an immense 
fire— a large party to dine with you, 
and one of them much affected with 
an asthma. 

Asking a lady to permit you to look 
at a beautiful string of very small 
pearls, breaking it in two, scattering 
them over the floor, and crushing se- 
veral under your feet in endeavouring 
to collect them. 

Moistening the only wafer in the 



MORE MISERIES. 33 

house, so long in your mouth, that 
upon taking it out you find it like a 
bit of rotten pear. 

In endeavouring to fold a letter up 
very neatly, splitting the corners, with 
your ivory knife. 

Striking your foot against another 
step after you had concluded that 
you had reached the top of the 
stairs. 

Upon a journey, having made some 
important memorandums in your 
pocket book, with a soft pencil, and 
finding every letter rendered illegible, 
— a bad memory. 



34 MORE MISERIES. 

Breaking jour spectacles a con- 
siderable distance from any town. 

Arriving in the winter, at the Glou- 
cester Coffee-House in the western 
mail at six o'clock of a cold drizzly 
morning, and finding the only ser- 
vant up engaged in scouring the back 
parlour, into which you are shewn. 

To be obliged frequently to meet 
in company a man, who opposes every 
remark for the purpose of starting an 
argument, in which he is always more 
vociferous than convincing. 

Being asked to dine with an author, 
and after dinner his pulling out a 



MORE MISERIES- 35 

long manuscript and reading until 
you must inevitably fall asleep, were 
you not constantly kept on the qui 
vive, by his asking you how you like 
this passage, and how that. 






56 MORE MISERIES. 

LETTER HI. 

Fen-Lodge, 
I AM glad to find by your letter, 
my dear Whi ruble, that you like my miseries. 
Vexations described, and vexations felt are very 
different, so much so, that I can now even laugh 
whilst I pourtray many of those grievances, which 
I endured, and without a smile, I assure 3011. 
In addition to the miseries which I send you, 
as I know you like whimsical things, laugh if 
you like at the following anecdote which 
occurred yesterday, in exercising our volunteers, 
by the bye, I ought to preface it by observing, 
that I admire the volunteer system, as much as 
any man, though in my poor opinion, your 
great men at St. Stephens made a sad blunder in 
permitting a volunteer to hold any rank but 
in his own particular description of service. 
Now for the anecdote— In the absence of the 
Captain of our volunteers, the Lieutenant, a 



MORE MISERIES. 37 

respectable farmer, had the command of the 
company; this worthy Officer, wanting to halt 
his men, who were marching in a most irregular 
manner, could not recollect the word " halt," in 
this dilemma, he cried out, " wooee, wooee, woo, 
wooee, mv boys" when the whole body imme- 
diately halted. Dorothea seems more composed : 
she has not yet heard from Mr. Debit, but if I 
know any thing of human nature she speedily will. 
Ever yours, 

F. MURMUR. 



Toasting a bit of bread at the end 
of a short dessert fork, before a good 
brisk fire, and burning the ends of 
your fingers without being able to 
toast it to your liking. 

Being surrounded by a parcel of 



38 MORE MISERIES. 

spoiled, squalling brats, 'till you are 
almost induced to think favourably of 
Herod. 

Attending ladies on a shopping ex- 
cursion. 

A fine overture playing, and a noisy 
audience. 

To hear nineteen prologues out of 
twenty. 

Being incessantly pestered to eat 
more, after you have made a hearty 
dinner. 

Rubbing the back of your hand by 



MORE MISERIES. 39 

mistake against the liquefying gum of 
a plumb tree. 

At a game at forfeits saluting a pret- 
ty looking girl, and finding that her 
teeth are not aromatic pearl. 

The miseries in the shape of mis- 
takes, which two persons of the same 
name, residing within four doors of 
each other, experience. 

In frosty weather descending a 
slippery piece of ground, here and there 
covered with thin hard ice, slipping 
down, in falling, laying hold of the 
ancle of a lady with whom you are 
walking, said lady somewhat stric- 



40 MORE MISERIES. 

ken in years, and drawing her after 
you. 

Sleeping over your wine, gradually 
driving your glass to the edge of the 
table and then by another somnolent 
movement, throwing it over a new 
pair of leathers. 

Climbing a cherry tree to gratify a 
young lady, and splitting your small 
clothes, just as you are gracefully 
stretching to knock off some of the 
ripest cherries into her handkerchief, 
which she holds below. 

Hearing ladies talk politics. 



MORE MISERIES. 41 

A female pun — a rare misery! 

Having succeeded in fixing yourself 
in a most seducing, and graceful at- 
titude, letting your cocked hat 
fall. 

Making several memorandum knots 
in your handkerchief, and forgetting 
the important cause of every one of 
them. 

Knocking at a door, and by a hor- 
rible and unaccountable lapse of me- 
mory, forgetting the name of the 
master or the mistress of the house. 

Having made a trip to Paris, during 



42 MORE MISERIES. 

the short peace, being bored to death, 
by every soul you meet with, to de- 
scribe Bonaparte. 

A collector of natural curiosities 
worrying you with a description of 
his invaluable tortoiseshell boar cat, 
his kitten with three eyes, his pig with 
one ear, &c. &c. 

Being conducted by an enthusiastic 
agriculturist round an extensive farm, 
having no taste whatever for the breed- 
ing of sheep, fattening pigs, new in- 
vented draining and threshing ma- 
chines, &c. &c. 

Being seized with a violent bowel 



MORE MISERIES. 43 

complaint, whilst you are riding on 
horseback with two young ladies, to 
one of whom you are paying your 
addresses, being obliged to alight in 
great confusion, telling your fair 
companions, that there is an ex- 
quisite bit of scenery round a hedge, 
which they have just passed, and 
which you should like very much to 
sketch, assuring them that you will 
return in five minutes, and remem- 
bering afterwards that it was well 
known you never drew in your life. 

Being required by a garrulous old 
lady, to know where she left off in a 
long story, which she was relating to 
you, she having been interrupted in 



44 MORE MISERIES. 

the middle of it by the fall of the fire- 
screen, or the servant delivering a 
message to her, not being able to in- 
form her, in consequence of not having 
attended to one word that she had 
been saying. 

Being invited to meet a party of 
literary men from whom you expect 
much pleasure, upon your arrival 
finding them all at cards, and the 
only person unoccupied, a boisterous 
country gentleman, who can talk of 
nothing but hounds and horses, and 
thinks he shows his good breeding 
by perpetually speaking to you. 

In the Volunteers—being short and 



MORE MISERIES. 45 

fat, cased in fleecy hosiery, at the 
instance of your fond wife, to guard 
against the effect of. sudden showers, 
having the command of a small at- 
tacking party of light infantry at a 
sham fight, and encountering stiles, 
gates and hedges at least ten thousand 
sharp stubs and stumps in the course 
of your evolutions—day very sultry. 

Passing with a shy horse in a gig in 
a narrow part of the Strand, the 
paviors repairing a broken water pipe 
on one side of you, and a long hea- 
vily laden coal cart approaching you 
on the other, the driver talking to a 
friend a little way behind, in this 
dilemma affecting to look cool and 



46 MORE MISERIES, 

collected with dismay in your soul, 
and the perspiration starting from 
every pore. 

Having just composed yourself to 
take a nap on your sofa, eternally tor- 
mented by two flies, in the middle of 
October, whom you could almost 
swear to, but cannot catch, and who 
judiciously prefer alighting and wash- 
ing their hands and faces on your 
nose and forehead, to regaling on an 
adjoining saucer full of sweet poison. 

After keeping within door* three 
days, from horrible nervous dislike tQ 
an east wind, which by the weather* 
cock fronting your chamber, lias beep 



MORE MISERIES. 47 

blowing all the time, to be told by 
a wag that he had fastened the vane 
due east, whilst it had been blowing 
due zvest all the time. 

Shooting Chelsea Bridge in a sailing 
boat, and not lowering the mast in 
time, whh is broken by the ren- 
contre, the vessel lying like a log in 
the water, yourself exposed to the 
laugh of spectators on the bridge above 
and the criticizing derision of the 
waterman below. 

Tempted by a fine summer evening 
to take an easy row on the water, and 
on your endeavours to display your 
skill in feathering your oar, as a party 



48 MORE MISERIES. 

passes by, losing one of your sculls, 
which being lighter, goes faster than 
the boat, and being perplexed by a 
mob of modes pointed out by the 
persons who observe your distress for 
recovery of the said skull. 

Entering upon any of the bridges 
of London, or any of the passages lead- 
ing to the Thames, being as sailed by a 
group of watermen, holding up their 
hands and bawling out, " Oars, Sir, 
" Sculls, Sir, Sculls, Sir, Oars, Sit." 

Upon paying the first visit after 
the funeral of a relation, a distant 
cousin for instance, to the immediate 
friends of the deceased, finding them 



MORE MISERIES. 49 

all in tears from some unaccountable 
counteraction of nature, not being 
able to look grave upon the occa- 
sion. 

Having so flaccid a cheek that the 
parish barber who shaves you, is 
obliged to introduce his thumb into 
your mouth to give it a proper pro- 
jection; cutting his thumb in this 
position, with the razor. 

Handing round, when a child, a 
plate of plumb cake, and seeing the 
last bit left, on which you had fixed 
your eye and heart, taken by one of 
the party. 



50 MORE MISERIES. 

Stepping out of a boat at low water 
in pumps, well-dressed, upon a stone 
which slides under you and you des- 
cend ankle deep in mud. 

Going to the Theatre on a very 
crowded night, waiting an hour in the 
pit passage half jammed to death, re- 
ceiving a dreadful kick on the ankle in 
making a desperate effort to stoop 
down to rub it, finding your hand in 
the coat pocket of the man who stands 
opposite to you, and gradually with- 
drawing it with indescribable horror, 
so as just to escape being taken up for 
a; pick-pocket. 

Travelling in a mail-coach one hun- 



MORE MISERIES. 51 

dred and eighty miles, and all the 
way having your nose offended by the 
most horrible stench, which each of 
the passengers thinks proceeds from 
his neighbour, and upon arriving at 
the Swan with Two Necks, Lad-Lane, 
discovering that the mauvaise odeur 
issued from a putrid hare in one of 
the seats, which owing to the careless- 
ness of the guard has been permitted 
to perform two journies to town. 

A long dead calm at sea in a Dutch 
galliot, during a short passage, bad 
accommodations and provisions nearly 
exhausted. 

Being tormented by a flea during 
d 2 



38 MORE MISERIES. 

a visit crawling up and down the leg 
under the boot, so that the nails can 
administer no relief. 

Upon returning from a Tour to the 
Continent, being asked by every one 
you meet for your private opinion of 
things in general. 

In a party being suddenly over- 
whelmed with a disposition to sleep, 
nodding every now and then, and 
giving an answer to a question put by 
a person Who does not perceive that 
you are between sleeping and waking 
which you fear may have no connec- 
tion with the question. 



MORE MISERIES. 53 

Ditto ineffectually rousing yourself 
and endeavouring by random com- 
ments upon those shattered portions of 
the conversation which you have heard, 
to make it appear that you have been 
as attentive as the rest of the party. 

Sleeping in a dark room, in a dark 
night, in a strange house, and after 
being kept awake by the most mys- 
terious sounds for three hours, at length 
beginning to be satisfied that they pro- 
ceed from an unusually active mouse, 



d 3 



54 MORE MISERIES, 

LETTER IV. 

Ftn-Lodgc. 
DEAR WHIMBLE, 

YOU made me smile at the account 
of your interview with Lord D His Lord- 

ship is certainly not one of the wise men of the 
east ; the repetition of his silly question which 
you had previously answered, reminds me of the 
story of a princess who asked a lady who was 
presented to her, how many children she had^ 
to which she replied, three ; about a quarter of 
an hour afterward, the princess met her again, 
and not knowing what to say, put the same ques- 
tion to her, to which she answered "that not 
(i having lain in since her highness had asked 
" her the same question she had still only three 
" children." 



MORE MISERIES. 55 

Debit has made the first advances to a re- 
conciliation, so I hope all things will go on 
smoothly, notwithstanding the war. I have the 
happiness of sending you some more miseries, 
and remain, 

Ever yours, 

F. MURMUR. 



Having lost your way, being in 
great haste, and asking a stuttering 
family to direct you to the place of 
your destination. 

Trying to pass a man who wad- 
dles. 

Being asked by an absent man to 

D4 



56 MORE MISERIES. 

dinner, and upon your arriving at his 
house finding him just set off for the 
country. 

A melancholy man dying of the hip 
seeing a hearse draw up and stop be* 
fore his door. — P. S. The coachman 
gone to the public house, so that 
there is no possibility of removing 
it. 

The wife of a Clerk in a public of- 
fice at a low salary, producing twins 
once a year. 

Having long supporters and sitting 
opposite to a prudish old maid in a mail 
coach on a long journey, who refuses to 



MORE MISERIES. 57 

open her leg^ to admit yours, which 
are tingling in every toe with the agony 
of compression. 

Having a long back, and discovering 
that the irons which fasten the back 
of the seat in a boat, are disordered. 

Being squeezed in a crowd, and hav- 
ing a little dwarf with red hair, jam- 
med up against you, immediately 
under your nose. 

Crossing a yard, and unexpectedly 
finding yourself within the extent of 
the chain of a large surly house-dog ? 
affecting boldly to look him in the face. 



58 MORE MISERIES. 

and in an agony of horror, gradually 
stealing away from him. 

Having your portrait finely painted 
in crayons, spoiled by your favourite 
Newfoundland dog, who struck with 
the resemblance, begins licking it, 
whilst the servant is cleaning the glass 
and frame. 

Soon after you have comfortably 
seated yourself in the drawing room of 
a fashionable family in the country, 
where you are to sleep for the night, 
having your comb and night-cap taken 
out of your pocket and laid on the 
floor, by a pert, spoiled, impudent 



MORE MISERIES. 59 

child, 'and finding the room in a titter 
at your expence. 

Being obliged to attend a very ab- 
sent man to a party of prudish ladies, 
and being fearful that every moment 
he will say or do something highly 
improper. 

Compelled by politeness when you 
are upon a visit at a house, to dance two 
dances with each of half a dozen ladies 
belonging to it, at the assize ball, all of 
whom are either ugly, lame, or in- 
sipid, and having no opportunity all 
the evening of going down one dance 
with a lovely young lady to whom 
you are attached, 



6*0 MORE MISERIES. 

Having a refusal to an offer of mar- 
riage sent by an inquisitive maid ser- 
vant, before the wafer is dry. 

Being obliged to hear a stupid fel- 
low boggle at a speech after dinner, 
upon being informed that his health 
has been drank, during his absence 
from the room* 

Receiving an insipid answer to a 
letter from a very absent man, who in 
his forgetfulness has folded up four 
sheets of paper instead of one, and for 
which you have the happiness of 
paying a heavy additional postage. 

Hastily marrying a lady, and af- 



MORE MISERIES. 6 1 

terwards discovering that she has an 
unroselike breath. 



Being requested to say something to 
entertain the party. 

Opening arid shutting a drawer 
which has swelled by the damp. 

Adjusting long unsettled accounts 
with a peevish partner, or an ignorant 
and suspicious tradesman. 

Sitting for your portrait to a subor- 
dinate painter who renders the likeness 
with such exasperating exactness, that 
every pimple, blotch and blemish in 
the face are faithfully represented. 



62 MORE MISERIES, 

Plunging for a rhyme to a good line 
and after many desperate efforts, being 
obliged to tag another, which either 
contains the same sentiments which 
breathes in the first, or one which has 
no affinity to your subject. 

Hearing an ode of your own com- 
position, which you think pregnant 
with pindaric fire and sublimity, 
called " pretty/' 

Sending your hunter over night to 
cover, twenty miles off, riding your 
hack and to the anxious enquiry as to 
the state of your hunter's health, your 
groom informs you that he is dead 
lame. 



MORE MISERIES. 6$ 

Being prevented from enjoying a 
days shooting, by unfortunately tum- 
bling into a wet ditch, covering your- 
self with mud, and filling your gun 
with water. 

Finding yourself sleepy, and being 
requested by the lady of the house, 
your particular friend, with whom 
you may make free, to take a nap: 
having comfortably composed your- 
self on the sofa, a waggish visitor 
with whom you are not sufficiently 
acquainted to authorize such a liberty, 
but whom you have seen too often to 
quarrel with on account of it, amuses 
himself and the party present, by 
tickling your nostrils with a piece of 



64 MORE MISERIES. 

paper rolled up to a point, awaking, 
hoping that he will not repeat it, sleep- 
ing again, and finding the torment 
repeated. 

Being obliged to surrender a news- 
paper which you have just began 
to read, to another, whose prero- 
gative to the first perusal of it, you 
cannot dispute 

At a coffee house, changing the 
newspaper of the day with a gentle- 
man, which you have read about two 
parts through, for one which you 
think is a new one, and finding it 
the paper of yesterday. 



MORE MISERIES. 65 

Expecting to read great news re- 
ceiving your newspaper quite wet from 
the press, the fire being just lighted. 

In a cold night, long legs, and a 
short camp bed. 



Dining with an avaricious fellow 
who has no idea of the comforts of a 
cheerful glass and conversation after 
dinner, or is unwilling to encourage 
them, being asked by him whether 
you will take a glass of wine or a walk. 

School misery— hearing the arrange- 
ments for a pleasant excursion to- 
morrow, when you are going to school 
to-night. 



66 MORE MISERIES. 

Opening a very stiff box filled with 
small wafers, and spilling them all 
over the room. 

A door slowly turning upon a creak- 
ing hinge. 

Being a fag to a tyrannical boy, 
forced to get out of window at night, 
to procure wine from the inn for him, 
and discovered and flogged for it. 

In the midst of a merry story being 
suddenly forced to weep by the sudden 
operation of an excessive portion of 
patent and potent mustard. 

In attempting to quit a house in 



MORE MISERIES. 67 

London on a Saturday evening, break- 
your shins against a pail, and receiv- 
ing the pole of a mop in your mouth* 

Swallowing a piece of crust the 
wrong way — several ladies present. 

Sitting down to dinner with a three 
pronged fork, each prong being of a 
different length. 



68 MORE MISERIES. 



LETTER V. 

Fen-Lodge, 

CONGRATULATE me, my dear 
Whimble ! Dorothea is at length Mrs. Debit. 
I, who mortally detest all pomp and shew, was 
obliged to attend en gala, to give away the bride, 
who was preceded by six poor little girls, who are 
cloathed and educated at her expense, strewing 
flowers before her all the way. She was attired in 
the Brussels lace and jewels of our worthy mother 
and grandmother, and wore a wreath of jessamine 
round her head, and looked like the Dowager 
Goddess of May. Her silly appearance really 
made me splenetic — What a day we had ! — I 
thought I should have gone distracted with the 
jangling of our two old crazy bells, the third 
having been sold ten years since to enable the 
parish to purchase a clock— All was noise and 



MORE MISERIES. 69 

confusion — Even the cats wore bridal favours. 
Heavens ! be praised, the happy pair are gone to 
your noisy city, and leave me in tranquillity- 
sufficient to send you a few more delectable 
miseries. 

Ever yours 

F. MURMUR. 



Being overpersuaded to stand up in 
a country dance, when you know, or 
what is equally bad, conceive that a 
bear would eclipse you in grace and 
agility. 

Relating a story to a fellow whose 
apprehension is so slow, that in the 
middle of a melancholy story; he begins 



70 MORE MISERIES. 

laughing at a merry one which you 
told him half an hour before. 

The shrill brassy crowing of a hoarse 
bantam cock. 

Having only port wine in the house 
to offer to a man who drinks only 
white. 

Being awakened out of a sound 
sleep in the dead of a cold frosty blow- 
ing night, in a mail coach on the 
weather-side, by the agreeable address 
of " Sir, please to remember the guard 
" I go no farther with you 5 Sir." 

Relating a story very much to the 



MORE MISERIES. 71 

credit of the hero of the piece, when 
a person very drily observes, that if it 
had not been for the name, he should 
have suspected that you were the very 
person, all the company showing, and 
(with great justice) that they think 
so too. 

Mis-directing your letter to a man 
whom you have quizzed in it most 
confoundedly* 

Riding in a full coach twenty miles 
to dinner, for want of which you are 
feint and exhausted, wishing to lean 
back, but not daring to do so, on ac- 
count of the back of the seat being be- 



72 MORE MISERIES. 

grimmed with clots of powder and 
pomatum, you wearing no powder. 

Sending a challenge, requesting a 
timid friend to attend you to the 
field, who you think will not fail to 
acquaint the magistrate of it ; going 
with horror to the appointed spot, 
anxiously looking back every step to 
see if the Bow Street officers are 
coming, without success. 

Hastening in the gout to an election 
which it is supposed will last only a 
short time, the w heel of your carriage 
damaged so that you cannot proceed, 
at a great distance from any wheel- 
wright. 



MORE MISERIES. 73 

Toasting a bit of cheese, and when 
it is more than half done, letting it 
fall into the ashes. 

Sleeping in a room with a loose 
window in a high wind, at the same 
time the chimney board being too 
small, and flying backwards and 
forwards. 

Going to the Theatre to see some 
distinguished play and performer, 
having places kept ; owing to some of 
the party not being ready in time, 
entering your box j ust as the first act 
is over, and observing the last bustle 
of a number of persons who have just 
descended into your front seats* and 



74 MORE MISERIES. 

are all smirking and smiling to think 
themselves so very fortunate. 

Carving for a large party with a 
blunt carving knife. 

Being the first subject which a raw 
young surgeon's apprentice is per- 
mitted to try his professional skill 
and knowledge upon. 

Having a bill sent in, which you 
thought had been long since paid. 

Being shaved on the Cornish coast, 
in the pilchard season, by the parish 
barber, who embraces your nose 
with a thumb and finger stinking of 

said fish. 



MORE MISERIES. 75 

At school, having pilfered a duck 
for supper, discovered by the half 
strangled bird quacking in your poc- 
ket, just as one of the masters passes 
by, and upon being taken up to be 
flogged, hearing two or three eggs 
fall from your breeches pocket after 
the first stroke of the rod. 

Wearing flannel drawers and waist- 
coat for the first time. 

In repeating some verses with un- 
common animation and emphasis, to 
a party on the water, tipping over 
• the side of the boat, and bein^ 
taken up, after a most mortifying 
ducking. 

13 S 



76 MORE MISERIES. 

Hearing that a young lady to whom 
you are ardently attached, and who 
you flattered yourself regarded you 
favourably, is displaying uncommon 
vivacity and spirits, at a distant wa- 
tering place, and that she is every 
where much admired. 

To be the child of a wet nurse, and 
sent to share with another infant, a 
nipple strongly impregnated with 
geneva, sky-blue and other nutritious 
liquors. 

In the country, going to a party to 
dinner, getting very tipsy, quitting 
the house in a dark night, and 
getting upon your horse with your 



MORE MISERIES. 77 

face towards the tail, and wondering 
during; the few minutes that you are 
able to keep your seat, amongst the 
jeers of your companions, what freak 
can have entered the brain of the 
beast to go backwards. 

You may remember my telling the following 
story when I returned from France — it 
happened to my companion, and I dare say 
has happened to others, I have therefore 
recorded it as a misery. 

Having escaped from a French pri- 
son, with a false passport, travelling 
through France, without knowing the 
language, with a companion in your 
flight who speaks it fluently, halting 
e 3 



78 MORE MISERIES. 

at an inn on account of his being taken 
very ill, and being obliged to feign 
sickness and to keep to your bed as 
long as he does, because if you move* 
out, without him, or attempt to speak, 
you ate sure of being discovered. 

Sleeping at an inn, giving your r % ight 
and left legged boots to be cleaned, 
and when you are awaked in the morn- 
ing and told that the mail is just set- 
ling off, calling for your boots, and 
having two left-legged boots brought 
up, swearing until you glow, at 
that distinguished personage called 
Boots, who after a long search is 
unable to find the right boot, and 
in consequence, being obliged to hop 



MORE MISERIES. 79 

into the coach with one left boot, and 
a filthy slipper on, and another left 
boot in your hand. 

Ditto the equally unpleasant si- 
tuation of the person to whom the 
strange boot you carry away belongs, 
who after you are gone, finds himself 
in the possession of two boots, which 
will only fit his tight leg. 

I 

The following misery happened to a most worthy 
and respectable friend of mine, and I dare 
say has not been confined to him. 

Going to the House of Commons 
at an early hour to hear an inte- 
resting debate, and being shut up in 

e 4 



80 MORE MISERIES. 

the gallery so long, that a mem- 
ber below just rising to address the 
Speaker, palpably discovers that na- 
ture has triumphed over decorum 
above, and upon the Deputy Usher 
of the Black Rod being sent up to 
discover the offender, betraying your- 
self by your blushes. 

A person very liable to have his 
teeth on edge, hearing a person cut- 
ting a cork. 

Having to cut open the leaves of a 
very popular book lent you only for a 
couple of hours, and perhaps for the 
sole purpose of saving the lender the 
trouble of opening them himself. 



MORE MISERIES. 81 

Taking a walk in the garden of a 
friend with whom you are engaged to 
dine, unexpectedly passing by the 
Kitchen, and seeing the cookmaid 
chewing the parsley previous to mix- 
ing it with the butter for the fowls 
which you are to have for dinner, by 
which process she saves herself the 
very unnecessary trouble of boiling 
and chopping it. 



82 MORE MISERIES. 



LETTER VI. 

Fen-Ledge. 
DEAR WHIMBLE, 

I FIND that my worthy brother 
in-law and his wife staid only two days in town, 
after which they proceeded to Brighton to spend 
the remainder of their blissful honeymoon. — I 
have, perhaps with the bitterness of an old 
grumbling bachelor, often regretted that mar- 
riage spoiled so many of our fine young women, 
as ornamental members of society. Methinks 
I see a mark of arch amazement start upon your 
face. It is even thus : how often are all the ac- 
complishments of an elegant young graceful 
creature, upon whom a costly education has 
been expended, suffocated in the baby-linen of 
her first child ? After she ©nee becomes a mother, 
the instrument upon which she excelled, is seldom 
unlocked, and the pencil with which she so 



MORE MISERIES. 83 

finely drew, is never more pressed between the 
fingers. 

My worthy Sister will derive no injury from 
marriage, for her accomplishments were solely 
confined to pickling and preserving, which I 
think are not likely to be interrupted by the 
laughing blue eyes of any tender pledge of love : 
although the silly woman, and I cannot help 
telling it to you (for I have just been informed 
of it by old Sarah, who told it with a sly smile) 
actually purchased a stock of baby linen just 
before her marriage. I send MORE MISERIES 
—-add, prune or exterminate, as suits your fancy. 
Ever Yours, 

F. MURMUR. 



Jumping in sacks at a fair and in 
the midst of the diversion hearing that 
a mad bull is coming down the street. 



84 MORE MISERIES. 

Being pinned up to a door round 
the neck by the horns of an enraged 
over-driven ox. 

An epicure in venison, being press- 
ed by a party of twelve equally fond 
of it, to carve. 

The following misery, somewhat long, actually- 
occurred to two of my friends, and I dare 
say may have happened to others. 

Going to a ball, becoming enamour- 
ed with your partner, procuring her 
name, and understanding that she 
was an only child, addressing the let- 
ter containing a tender display of 
your affections to Miss So-and-so, re- 
ceiving a favourable reply, rushing to 



MORE MISERIES. 85 

the house, being introduced to an 
elder sister whom you had drawn for a 
partner in the course of the preceding 
evening without knowing it, who feels 
no objection to your person, and who 
of course concluding from the super- 
scription that the billet was intend- 
ed for her was disposed to receive 
your offer most graciously, being 
thunderstruck at the mistake, and 
covered with confusion being obliged 
in the most horribly awkward manner 
to explain. 

Ditto the Lady's sensations. 

At table after dinner hearing one 
of your children's little, but loud inv 



86 MORE MISERIES. 

impromptus upon the pimples luxu- 
riantly budding out upon the nose 
of one of your visitors. 

Being obliged to hear and applaud a 
vulgar impudent school boy whilst he 
is repeating a speech from some play. 

Also to hear very young ladies raw 
from school play and sing and to see 
them dance figure dances, without 
grace or agility, the poor things being 
ready to burst into tears at every step 
they take. 

■» 

The sensation of a school girl whilst 
she is comfortably picking a merry 
thought with her teeth, being angrily 



MORE M1SIRIIS. 87 

told by her mother before a party 
to hold her head up. 

Being fumed with flattery to your 
face, by a miscreant, whom you have 
reasons to suspect, speaks ill of you 
behind your back. 

Walking upon Woburn sand with a 
Wooden leg. ^ 

Having your shin scraped by a large 
powerful man going down a dance 
with extraordinary agility and energy. 

A false calf shifting in a dance. 

Going to a house in the country ,the 



m MORE MISERIES. 

people of which, see very little com- 
pany, also being put into the best 
bed. 

T.nuq 
It raining hard and no coach to be 
had, borrowing at night a great coat, 
upon getting home finding the bottom 
of one end of your cocked hat and the 
cape and part of the back of your 
coat covered with pomatum and pow- 
der, you wearing none. 

Three times pitching your voice too 
high, when you are asked to sing be- 
fore a large party. 

Overwhelmed with bashfulness, 
sitting down to a piano forte, to play 



MORE MISERIES. 89 

for the first time at a private concert, 
the music book being only high enough 
to conceal your chin from the com- 
pany whose eyes are fixed upon 
you. 

Cutting bread and butter with a 
knife, the handle of which has been 
touched by some one, whose fingers 
have come in contact with honey. 

Invited to dine in the city; having 
the reputation of a great genius with 
the party, you are pleased at seeing 
one of the guests take out his pocket 
book and pencil, and write as often 
as you speak, you push all your bril- 
liant puns and quaint sayings, after a 



90 MORE MISERIES. 

little time you observe with timid mo- 
desty, that you must be careful, as 
your observations are recorded, upon 
which you are told, that the gentleman 
you allude to, is a great Fishmonger, 
and that he is merely writing down 
such thoughts as occurred on business, 
such as " twenty-two salmon by the 
" smack Arabella, &c." 

The first day of a boy going to a 
public school. 

A girl at school whose feet have a 
strong; natural inclination to turn to- 
wards each other, and who stoops pro- 
digiously, undergoing the grace- 
creating operations of collars, back- 



MORE MISERIES. 91 

boards, stocks, neck-swings, dumb- 
bells, and all the new instruments of 
torture in Sheldrake's shop. 

In the holidays being asked several 
classical questions by a dry learned 
old man, in the presence of your father 
and a large party. 

A boy however naturally audacious 
with his playfellows, just come from 
school, and entering a room where 
there are six young ladies and no gen- 
tlemen present. 

The horror of contriving how to 
adjust ones legs and arms at the age of 
nineteen in a drawing room. 



92 MORE MISERIES 

Getting the Caledonian Cremona, 
when you are just upon the point of 
marriage. 

Catching a violent ague in the first 
quartering of the honeymoon. 

Carving a very fine hot ham at din- 
ner, and lubricating your thumb, and 
third finger with the fat at every inci- 
sion, not to mention the almost inse- 
parability of the odour which in conse- 
quence perfumes those very serviceable 
members of the human body, 

Meeting a young lady the first time 
after an intended match is broken off 
(love tolerably, but not excessively 



MORE MISERIES. 93 

deep) looking like two shy cats, each 
obliquely watching the other to see 
what degree of dejection the sepa- 
ration has produced. 

In the country asking a man whe- 
ther he will have port or white wine 
having only port in the house, when 
he gives the preference to white — No 
inn nearer than three miles. 

Listening to the criticisms and ar- 
guments of a learned lady. 

In a party to which a few days 
before you had introduced a very 
learned, but reserved friend for whom 
you wished to secure their favourable 



94 MORE MISERIES. 

opinion, hearing a superficial elderlj 
lady, who had the reputation of being 
profound, remark that she had ex- 
amined him in philosophy, physic, 
and divinity, and could find nothing 
in him. 

Sitting in a gloomy small room 
looking into a dark narrow passage, 
the pavement of which is repairing. 

Going twelve miles to dinner, in 
doubtful weather, being anxiously 
tender for your horse, who has been 
bled the day before, upon your arrival, 
finding- your friend astonished that 
you had not received his note to post- 
pone the pleasure, on account of two 



MORE MISERIES. 95 

of his children being in the small-pox, 
and one more sickening. 

Going to a house to dine, where you 
expected to sleep, finding the house full 
pressed to stay ^till the moon gets up, 
which at the expected hour is for the 
first time during its quarter, obscured 
by clouds, and in attempting to get 
home by a short cut, learn of a cot- 
tager, whom you arouse from his sleep, 
that you have driven four miles out 
of your way. 

Feeling a violent irritation in your 
head at a dinner party, and being 
afraid to apply even the nail of your 
little finger to the peccant part. 



96 MORE MISERIES. 

When you are relating a narrative, 
which you only know superficially, 
finding all your little, and as you think 
successful flights of fancy detected by 
a cold, crabbed Disciple of truth and 
chronology. 

Going to town on purpose to receive 
your own dividend upon a sum which 
you understand is below the operation 
of the income tax, finding at the Bank 
a heavy deduction, and directed to 
make your appeal to the L — d knows 
who, and the L — d knows where. 

Being seized with a sneezing fit in 
going down a dance with a very de- 
licate fine lady. 



MORE MISERIES. 97 

Being a bad carver and notwith- 
standing every diffident effort to elude 
the office, finding the only chair vacant 
when you enter the dining room last, 
placed opposite to a tough hare. 

Upon a water excursion, drinking 
out of the same tumbler, with another 
person, and immediately afterwards 
discovering that he has an unpleasant 
Up. 

The weather looking very fine, 
volunteering to give up your inside 
place for the box, in a full coach, to 
a lady who is uncommonly anxious 
to proceed in the same vehicle, soon 
after clouds rolling upon clouds, and 



98 MORE MISERIES 

a deluge pouring down upon you — the 
coachman having only one great coat, 
and gallantry forbidding you to re- 
sume your place within. 

Losing the lash of your whip as you 
are driving in a Curricle, for the 
first time, in a town where a fair is 
holding. 

Reaching a town late at night, not 
knowing that the assizes are holding 
there — no bed, or room. 



MORE MISERIES. 99 

LETTER VI. 

Fcn-Lcdgr 9 
MY DEAR WHIMBLE, 

I told you that Mr. and 
Mrs. Debit staid only two days in town : they 
contrived however to display their taste by going 
to see Mrs. Siddons in Lady Macbeth ; accom- 
panied by our gay young friend, Swinburne; 
and they also contrived to exhibit one of the 
most vexatiously ridiculous scenes, ever performed 
before or behind the curtain of any theatre : poor 
Debit is very deaf, (and to have married my 
sister, I should have thought that he had been 
blind too :) in the celebrated scene when that 
inimitable actress electrifies the souls of her 
hearers, b) T whispering " out damned spot," Debit 
not knowing what she uttered, turned round to his 
wife, and loud enough to be heard in every part 
F2 



100 MORE MISERIES. 

of the house, which was as silent as a tomb, ex- 
claimed "my dear what does she say ?" to which 
Dorothea replied, equally audibly, and forgetting 

where she was, " out damned spot, my dear" 

Silly woman ! had I been there, it would have 
put me into such a transport of irritability, that 
my nerves would have trembled for at least two 
months afterward. Swinburne wrote to me yes- 
terday, and told the whole story. All the 
people in the pit stood up, and every eye strained 
to see my rural sister and her cockney spouse ; 
whilst bursts of " turn them out, throw them 
f{ over!" resounded from the galleries. — I told 
you that they are now playing the fool at Brigh- 
ton, and I shall dread to open every letter that 
comes from that quarter. Heavens grant the 
defect in Debit's auricular organ may occasion 
no more such horrible consequences. I have 
been fretful ever since I heard of the affair, 
and should be ready to quarrel with myself if 



MORE MISERIES. 101 

I had not found a little vent in sending you a 
few more effusions from the school of grief. 

Yours ever, 

F. MURMUR. 



Going early in the winter to a coffee 
house to read the papers in which you 
expect to meet with some very interest- 
ing matter, finding the fire not lighted* 
and the waiters just beginning to rub 
the tables, not a paper arrived. 

Miseriesof a lady who being asked to 
dine with a very particular family on 
a rainy day, in consequence of not be- 
ing able to get a coach, walks part of 
the way in boots, at length finds a 
? 3 



102 MORE MISERIES. 

coach, and upon taking off her boots 
to put on her shoes discovers that she 
has dropped one out of her muff in 
the street. 

Having made a newly-rolled gravel 
walk, finding some friends whom you 
had asked to dine with you, amusing 
themselves before dinner, by drawing 
each other in your child's chaise, 
which disastrously stood at the bot- 
tom of the garden, within sight, see- 
ing the narrow wheels cut up the walk 
most unmercifully, and being deter- 
red by a false notion of politeness 
from giving them a hint to desist. 

Being persuaded to put your finger 



MORE MISERIES. 103 

into the cage of a parrot and to rub 
his pole, upon an assurance from its 
doating mistress, that it is the most gen- 
tle bird in the universe, suddenly feel- 
ing the sanguinary effects of its beak. 

In walking down stairs in the dark, 
coming to a forcible stop in conse- 
quence of being deceived in your ex- 
pectation of another step. 

Going a bye way to a friend's house 
on horseback, through a number of 
gates, and finding the last locked. 

Sending a challenge to a man be- 
cause you thought him a coward, who 
accepts it. 

f 2 



104 MORE MISERIES. 

Introducing a country cousin to 
your table, when you have a party of 
fashionables, and when the finger 
glasses are brought in, sweating to the 
bone, on seeing him awkwardly imitate 
the rest by driving his fist into one, 
and breaking it to extricate his pon- 
derous paw. 

Knocking in the dog days, at the 
door of a house with a southern as- 
pect, the sun in its meridian, and the 
servant in the back attic. 

Buying a sixpenny bargain of a Jew 
who in exchange for a seven shilling 
piece gives you a counterfeit dollar. 



MORE MISERIES. 105 

Four persons in a room, three of 
whom are doatingly fond of whist, 
and the fourth not knowing the game. 

In a very rainy day, volunteering 
to procure a hackney coach for a lady, 
and after an hour's search, seeing 
one j ust come upon the stand, which 
is engaged by somebody else, the mo- 
ment you reach it. 

Your bad memory faintly flashing 
conviction upon your mind, that you 
have twice repeated one of your own 
jokes to the same person, at no great 
distance of time. 

Soliciting an acquaintance to assist 



IOG MORE MISERIES. 

you in a literary project, and being 
tormented by his diffident, disquali- 
fying speeches. 

Being obliged to attend to a puppy, 
who has an astonishing: flow of words 
without any ideas. 

Listening to a man who is always 
aiming at being eloquent, is very fond 
of metaphor, which he confounds in 
the following manner. 

" As a mighty river, swelled by 
" mountain torrents, over-running its 
" banks, tramples under foot every 
" intervening obstacle, and fired by 
" opposition gathers new wings from 



MORE MISERIES. \ r 7 

" every impediment; so oratory ap- 

" plied to our passions, fascinates our 

" faculties, sharpens our capacities, 

" and impels our judgments." 

In the body of an interesting nar- 
rative finding a reference to a dry long 
note at the bottom or to some matter 
contained in the appendix at the end. 

Quitting a person difficult of access 
without having mentioned the only 
subject upon which you sought your 
interview, all owing to a long and 
profound dissertation on the weather, 
politics and family anecdotes. 

Upon quitting the presence of a great 



108 MORE MISERIES. 

man in his grand saloon, boggling at 
a false door, and forcing him to rise 
to shew you the proper mode of 
your exit. 

Having fabricated a brilliant im- 
promptu, which you felt confident 
would be called forth in the course of 
conversation, finding no opportunity 
of introducing it. 

Endeavouring to make violent love 
under the table, and pressing the 
wrong foot. 

Writing a play with infinite pains, 
every line of which you think un- 
rivalled, and upon beginning to read 






MORE MISERIES. 109 

it to a confidential friend, being in- 
formed that the same subject had been 
dramatized ten years ago. 

At dinner introducing a small fish 
bone into your mouth, and finding 
after an irritable search in your bree- 
ches and waistcoat pockets that you 
have left your toothpick case behind. 

Half asleep, and languidly moving 
to bed, pulling your chamber door 
after you with an impetus, which you 
think will certainly shut it, and find- 
ing that the bolt of the lock has over- 
shot itself; unavailingly fidgetting 
at the door, until you have lost all dis- 
position to sleep. 



110 MORE MISERIES. 

Waking from a nap after supper, 
having two stories to ascend to your 
bedroom, and a pair of new boots and 
tight pair of pantaloons to take off. 

In the absence of your servant, 
lighting your candle with a match, 
and unthinkingly holding your head 
over, and inhaling the burning brim- 
stone. 

Clerical misery — In preaching before 
the judges at the Assizes, finding a 
page of your sermon missing, by which 
you are left abruptly in the middle of 
a sentence which you thought the 
finest in your discourse, and plunging 
into the fractured part of another, 



MORE MISERIES. 1 1 1 

which has no connection whatever 
with the subject of the last. 

A family in the country, much, 
addicted to scandal, spending a long- 
day with you. 

Being in a great hurry, and at- 
tempting to blow out the candle with 
a long snuff, the same rekindling by 
the puff which was intended to have 
extinguished it. 

Attending a school play. 

In consequence of reading in the 
papers that the reservoir at Padding- 
ton would be emptied for the purpose 



113 MORE MISERIES. 

of discovering a great quantity of hid- 
den treasure, going thither with great 
inconvenience, and finding the whole 
to be false, being laughed at by 
crowds of people who were standing 
there and who had been deceived in 
the same manner — First of April, 

Shivering with cold in a coach the 
windows being kept down in conse- 
quence of two fat women who occupy 
the extremities of one seat being faint 
and disposed to be sick. 

Getting into a high coach upon a 
short iron step. 

Going out in a sharp frosty morning 



MORE MISERIES. 113 

and leaving your pocket handkerchief 
behind. 



Being sick at sea, and upon look- 
ing out of your wretched birth, seeing 
two or three passengers eating fat ham 
without any concern. 

Sleeping upon the floor in the cabin 
of a packet, a passenger above you 
suffering very much from the maladie 
de mer all night. 

Hearing your friends observe of a 
portrait which did not do you justice, 
that it was a likeness, but if they 
might be permitted to say so, rather 
flattering. 



114 MORE MISERIES. 

On a short voyage hearing the cap- 
tain of a packet impatiently and pee- 
vishly asked every minute whether the 
wind is fair, and if not, when it will 
be so, and at what time he thinks he 
shall reach the place of destination. 



MORE MISERIES. Ho 

LETTER VII. 

Fen- Lodge. 
DEAR WHIMBLE, 

I have just heard from Brighton, 
and as I told you, Dorothea has been again mak- 
ing herself conspicuous. She must needs dis- 
play her beautiful form upon a "Jerusalem po- 
ney," as the sorry animal is called, who kicked 
and threw her, to the great amusement of the 
idle folks who were parading the Steyne : and 
only four days since, Debit nearly escaped drown- 
ing in his struggles to resist the humane exertions 
of a large Newfoundland dog, who rushed into 
the water after him, thinking that he was out of 

his depth. Really the follies and freaks of 

this new married couple are more vexations to 
me than any of the miseries I have sent you. 

Ever yours, 

F. MURMUR. 



116 MORE MISERIES. 

Wishing to have an early breakfast, 
and the kettle refusing as if by fatality, 
to boil. 

Having taken your place in the 
Bristol mail, being subpoened to at- 
tend the assizes the next day, waking 
at Coventry, having been put into a 
wrong coach. 

A pimple itching, so high between 
the shoulders, as to defy every attempt 
to relieve yourself. 

Awakened out of your first sleep, * 
nearly suffocated by the stench of a 
candle just expired in the socket. 



MORE MISERIES. 1 1 7 

Awakened every half hour by 
the watchman crying the time, and 
finding your house robbed in the 
morning. 

Walking in a dark night, without 
lamp, or lanthorn, upon unequal 
ground. 

Going into a party, with a cold in 
the head, having left your pocket 
handkerchief behind you. 

Calling upon a couple of dear de- 
7nestic friends ', and never finding them 
at home. 

Having worn your great coat, and 



1 1 8 MORE MISERIES. 

carried a large umbrella for six days, 
in consequence of the heavy appear- 
ance of the weather, without having 
any rain, going out without either, on 
the seventh, the morning being 
remarkably fine, and getting wet 
through. 

Angling for the day, in a punt, 
with a companion who catches a fish 
every three minutes, without having 
one bite yourself. 

Fond of being your own carpenter, 
attempting to take offa lock the screws 
of which have rusted in their holes, 
and your screw driver perpetually slip- 
ping out of its bite. 



MORE MISERIES. 119 

Perspiringly entering a crowded 
drawing-room, struck with horror at 
perceiving as you steal an oblique 
complacent peep at yourself in the 
mirror over the chimney, a dingy, 
dirty line round your forehead, im- 
pressed by the inside black leather of 
a new purchased hat. 

Peevishly pulling up a window cur- 
tain, two pullies refusing to move, and 
three of the lines being twisted. 

Seeing a little rascally bright-eyed 
mouse enter your chamber, which you 
have cursed through many a sleepless 
night, making sure of him j giving him 
a nervous chase all round the room, 



120 MORE MISERIES. 

in very hot weather, he nimbly eluding 
every stroke of the poker, and after 
having fidgetted yourself into a high 
perspiration, seeing him take French 
leave through a tiny unobserved 
cranny. 

Asked to meet a great wit, and 
placed at a distance from him at table. 

A great and distinguished character 
at table, asking you a plain simple 
question upon a subject, which you 
have written upon, struck stupid by 
a nervous horror and awe. 

The miseries of a player who is no 
orator being called upon for an apo- 



MORE MISERIES. 121 

logy for having kept the audience 
waiting. 

A keen sportsman attending his 
second wife ta the grave, and seeing 
the melancholy procession spring a 
brace of partridges as it enters the 
church yard. - 



At an inn going into a bed too short, 
with a wooden leg, which you were 
too fatigued to unstrap, drawing up 
the living one, going to sleep with the 
other sticking out at the bottom, 
which, when the chamber maid comes 
in for the candle, she conceives to 
be the handle of the warming pan, 
which she has carelessly left in the bed, 

G 



122 MORE MISERIES. 

from which she pulls you halfway in 
a transport of agony, before she is con- 
vinced of her mistake. 

Sending one of your coach horses 
which has bad fetlocks, to the nearest 
farrier (a shrewd horse doctor) who pro- 
nounces his case to be the gutta serena, 
and immediately administers a drench, 
by copiously bleeding the hairy pa- 
tient, and making him swallow his 
reeking blood, by which his life is 
endangered. 

Saying a good thing without hitting. 

Hearing the bells ring for the mar- 
riage of your rival. 



MORE MISERIES. 123 

A person of delicate health to avoid 
damp feet, takes a boat and after some 
time enjoying his escape, discovers 
that he has been sitting some time in 
a small leak. 

Being annoyed by the venders of bills 
of the play, in going to the theatre, 
having a party of fine ladies to attend 
to. 

A Physician of delicate organs, called 
out of bed, to a rich, liberal, and irri- 
table patient, stopped half an hour, 
in a narrow street, by a night cart. 

Being stopped in a street, by some 
Brewers lowering a barrel into a cellar, 

G 2 



124 MORE MISERIES. 

and thrown down by the ropes, in en- 
deavouring to pass it. 

Having relieved a distressed object, 
seeing him wink to a brother vaga- 
bond. 

An elderly proud prelate, sitting 
upon a settee, thinking that it has a 
back, leans backward, and falls head 
over heels, rushing to relieve him, 
horribly grinding one of his hands 
with the heel of your new shoe. 

A great fop, who was afraid of 
spoiling his shape by putting any 
thing into his pockets, in taking off 
his hat to salute a lady in a crowded 



MORE MISERIES. 125 

street, throwing out his knife, comb, 
tooth-pick, &c. &c. forgetting that 
he had placed them in the crown 
of it. 

A lady sitting often in the depth of 
winter to a tedious and expensive 
artist, with her neck and arms bare, 
to shew her points of beauty, and after 
all, the painter only thinking it 
like. 

Theatricals — A tall fat man in dres- 
sing for Romeo, stuffing himself into 
a pair of tight small clothes, made for 
a short thin person, and obliged to 
conceal the shortness of the waistband, 
by wearing* an old fashioned waist- 



126 MORE MISERIES. 

coat with long flaps falling down al- 
most to the knees. 

Another — Two antique ama- 
teurs playing Lysimachus and He- 
phestion (young lovers) in the tragedy 
of Alexander, in greeting each other, 
their Brutus wigs come off with their 
helmets, and discover their bald 
pates. 



MORE MISERIES. 127 

LETTER VII. 

Ftn-Lodge. 

DO not, my dear Whimble, 
mention the French to me again in a favourable 
manner. The only comfort I have is in reading 
all the papers and works that are published against 
them : and though I trust I have as much bene- 
volence as my neighbours, I real J y hate them 
as I do the Devil and more too. Every victory 
they gain shakes my poor patriotic nervous frame, 
from its extremities to the centre. I have dis- 
missed my grocer (an honest man too) because 
he spoke well of them to my groom the other 
day, and have substituted another, because I was 
told that at the club of which he is a member, 
he positively declared that he knew it to be a 
" solemn fact" that every Frenchman was made 
precisely the same as a monkey. From having 



i#8 MORE MISERIES. 

been in France in my younger days, I knew that 
unless they were much altered since, this 
could not be the case, but the assertion proved the 
fellow to be so hearty in his hatred, that I cannot 
help admiring him amazingly, though I already 
find his tea has not so fine a flavour as that of 
his predecessor. 



I heard yesterday from Dorothea who is 
still at Brighton, where she informs me she has 
received uncommon attentions from a gentleman, 
who is there called " The Green Man," from 
every part of his dress being of that colour, 
and from his living upon green vegetables. I 
suspect that this eccentric personage must be 
a little wild, and will place her in some ridicu- 
lous situation or another, though she says she 
never met with a politer gentleman, and that 
he is much handsomer and better bred than our 
town-clerk. She adds that Mr. Debit is very 



MORE MISERIES. 129 

fond of him, for he seems so well acquainted 
with omnium and Stock Exchange matters. 

I wish from my soul that this unaccount- 
able couple would return home as soon as pos- 
sible. Old Sarah hinted to me yesterday, that 
the sole reason which led her mistress to Brighton 
was on account of sea bathing being favourable 
to procreation. I had almost forgotten to say 
that I have sent MORE MISERIES. 
Ever yours, 

F. MURMUR. 



Trying to see a pimple on your 
shoulder until your head grows giddy. 

Spoiling a new pair of gloves by 
raising a knocker freshly painted, and 
not dry. 



130 MORE MISERIES. 

Knocking at the door of a house 
for half an hour, and then being told 
by a neighbour that the house has been 
empty for the last two months. 

Riding to visit a friend at a con- 
siderable distance, whom you find 
set off at the same hour by a different 
rout to call upon you. 

A thick short, man waltzing with a 
very fat tall woman. 

In a cold night putting your feet 
into a pan of hot water and drawing 
them instantly out upon finding it 
scalding hot, then as suddenly pour- 
ing such a quantity of cold water as 



MORE MISERIES. 131 

to render the whole useless — all the 
servants gone to bed 

In a strange house drawing the 
curtains in a morning and at one pull 
bringing the cornice upon your head. 

Riding in a long coach very full, and 
being frequently tormented by having 
some small parcels taken out of the 
seat. 

In trying to recover your cocked 
hat as you enter the pit of the opera, 
losing your party. 

Moving to get rid of a cheesemon- 
ger, and the cheesemonger immediately 



132 , MOKE MISERIES. 

after taking a house opposite to you 
upon a long lease. 

A vain woman discovering the first 
blush of a large pimple upon her 
nose. 

Tormented for a week with a se- 
vere tooth ache going to a dentist who 
draws a sound tooth next to the de- 
cayed one. 

A false tooth dropping out at a 
card table, 

A man writing letters to his wife 
and mistress and misdirecting them. 



MORE MISERIES. 133 

Being nervous and cross examined 
by Mr. G arrow. 

In gently elevating the candlestick 
to raise the expiring candle by a sud- 
den jerk throwing the whole in a fluid 
state upon the sleeve of your codt. 

Singeing your hair with your cur- 
ling irons— Ditto your fingers. 

Hurrying to a party, and finding 
you have tied your neckcloth too tight. 

Your servant out of the way, run- 
ning down into the butler's pantry at 
a house where you are intimate, and 
taking up the blacking for the cloath's 



134 MORE MISERIES. 

brush, and smearing your coat from 
the collar to the cuff. 

Discovering; in a large party your 
name at full length in " chemica 
durable ink" upon the corner of your 
neckcloth. 

Sitting down alone in a large party 
upon a sofa which makes an equivo- 
cal noise. 

Playing on a piano-forte, miserably 
out of time 

Your memory failing in the middle 
of a song, which after two or three 
abortive attempts to get on with, you 



MORE MISERIES. 1 35 

are obliged to acknowledge is impos- 
sible. 

Being requested to read a novel, to 
a party of ladies, of the style of which, 
the following extract will serve as a 
specimen. 

" Touched by that indefeasible and 
" durable impulse by which good and 
" great minds are gravitated towards 
" each other, the Marchioness of V. 
" and the Chevalier U. arose just at 
" the same moment, when the high 
" poised songster, with his downy 
" plumage, was winnowing the paly 
11 <zther, and whilst the hazy down still 
" mantled the mountainous heights — 



136 MORE MISERIES. 

" At that hour ', fermentive fancy an- 
" ticipate an endless plenitude of rap- 
" ture. The roseate blushes of the 
" Marchioness kindled the dew- 
" bathed aromatic vegetation into lus- 
" trous animation/ 3 &c. &c. 

Losing your voice by a cold, being 
fond of disputation, and hearing an 
argument at table, in which you think 
you could take a shining part, whisper- 
ing loudly, squeaking and sputter- 
ing, without being intelligible. 

Seeing a stupid fellow, half drunk, 
drawing figures with the wine which 
he has spilt upon your table, which 
your servants have long laboured 



MOKE MISERIES. 137 

upon, to bestow upon it a mirror 
polish. 

At a party before dinner, hearing 
the weather discussed in all its tenses, 
past, present, and future. 

Receiving a visit from a fashionable, 
with whom you have become ac- 
quainted at a watering place, at your 
lodgings in a court, in rather an ig- 
noble part of the town, who shews 
by his half suppressed surprize, the 
latent determination of his heart, to 
cut vou in future. 

Hearing that a woman who had 
lived with you as a maid servant, to 



138 MORE MISERIES. 

whom you had ever acted with the 
spotless purity of Joseph, had sworn a 
spurious child to you. 

Taking home a sixpenny damson 
tart full of juice, in your hand, wrap- 
ped up in a thin piece ofwhited-brown 
paper, carelessly bruising' the crust, 
and turning it sideways as you go along. 

Having your umbrella turned up in 
a whirlwind that fills your eyes with 
dust. 

Having been promised a present by 
a friend, which he never sent, dis- 
covering from some indirect remarks 
of his, that he thinks he has. 



, MORE MISERIES. 139 

No post day in the country. 

Landing in England far from your 
friends after a continental tour, short 
of cash and longing for wine and 
fruit after dinner but dare not ven- 
ture on it. 

The pantomime stratagems used on 
the Continent by Englishmen ignorant 
of the language of the country through 
which they are travelling; for instance 
— Losing your way in the streets of 
Calais, not knowing a word of the 
French language, remembering that 
your hotel is at the Silver Lion, being 
obliged to put a shilling in your 
mouth, and set yourself in the atti- 



140 MORE MISERIES. 

tude of a lion rampant, before you 
can make any one understand, and 
then with infinite difficulty, what it 
is you mean. 

A man pressed to publish by his 
friends for the first time, reading his 
work unmercifully lashed by the re- 
viewers. 



MORE MISERIES. 141 

LETTER IX. 

Fen-Lodge* 

I have been tormented to death, 
my dear Whimble, since I wrote to you, by the 
agitations of old Sarah, who was subpcened to 
attend our quarter sessions, to prove that an old 
friend of her's, an itinerant fidier, who was 
tried for having uttered seditious expressions, 
was occasionally disordered in his intellects. She 
has just returned in triumph, with a blue fa- 
vour, having saved her friend, by proving that 
his head was frequently as cracked as his jiddle* 
Whilst under cross examination, William, my 
groom, who attended her, said that she made a 
lucky hit, which put the court into a roar: whilst 
Mr. Jekyll the witty Barrister, and as you know 
a little man in point of figure, who was concerned 



142 MORE MISERIES. 

for the prosecution, was pressing her very sharply, 
the council for the prisoner, rose up, and re- 
quested her not to be alarmed at his learned 
brother, to which old Sarah, thus cheered up, 
took courage, and dropping a curtesy, replied, 
" Sir, it is not a little thing that can alarm me." 
I have often heard the old woman make dry 
observations, but did not know that she had any 
thing like wit in her composition before. — Adieu, 
I have scribbled out a few more miseries. 

F. MURMUR. 



Engaging the attention of a large 
party to witness the performance of a 
trick upon the cards, and failing in the 
attempt. 

Preparing a company to laugh at a 



MORE MISERIES. 143 

good story, and finding that not a 
risible muscle moves. 

Telling the company ironically, 
upon being pressed to sing that they 
are to expect a melancholy ditty, mean- 
ing to surprise them, as you advance 
in the sons:, having the mortification 
to find that no one smiles, and upon 
the conclusion over hearing some one 
observe, that it was certainly melan- 
choly, but not so deep as he expected. 

Snuffing the candle for a lady who 
is in the middle of a difficult sonata of 
Viott — out — only one candle. 

Getting upon a high stool or table 



144 MORE MISERIES. 

to reach down a folio, and bringing 
down a cloud of dusty pamphlets on 
your head. 

Going over a leap before your horse 
with the bridle in your hand, and 
finding from the obstinacy of the 
animal that he will inevitably pull you 
back again. 

Turning your horse over a leap, let- 
ting him loose, and after running over 
four or five newly ploughed fields, catch- 
ing him, and being so out of breath, 
that you are not able to mount, at this 
critical moment seeing the hounds 
running in view. 



MORE MISERIES. Hi 

A man being very fond of panto* 
mimes, going three times to see a 
celebrated flying leap that is over 
instantaneously, and every time whilst 
the trick is performing, somebody 
always jogging him at the precise 
moment, so that he is always pre- 
yented from seeing it. 

Coming from a distant part of the 
country to London to see a grand pro- 
cession, and overwhelmed with fa- 
tigue sleeping in the bed room of 
your inn and when you are awakened 
being told that it has passed some 
time. 

An amateur of executions, attend- 



146 MORE MISERIES. 

ing from a very early hour to con- 
template his favourite diversion, the 
victim of which was to be some dis- 
tinguished malefactor, and finding 
that the miserable wretch is reprieved 
as he mounts the scaffold. 

Slapping the back of a supposed 
acquaintance in the street who turns 
round and discovers a face perfectly 
unknown to you. 

Two men with umbrellas in a nar- 
row passage in a high wind. 

Letting a new stick fall down the 
area of an empty house into which 
there is no possible entrance. 



MORE MISERIES. 147 

Being fond of summer cabbage, 
chopping it up with great care and 
mixing in due proportions, vinegar, 
pepper, and melted butter, eating a 
great portion thereof, and then dis- 
covering in the remnant three or four 
large green caterpillars. 

Nailing a deal box in a hurry, and 
by a violent stroke driving the nail so 
far that it splits the top in two— coiach 
going off. 

Makingyour thumb and fingers sore 
with pulling up the heel of a new pair 
of tight shoes. 

Upon being introduced for the first / 
h 2 



148 MORE MISERIES. 

time, in a large party, catching your 
toe in the carpet at the door, and con- 
sequently bolting into the room, as if 
you were intoxicated. 

Obliged out of politeness, to caress 
a favourite lap dog, which has sore 
eyes and bad breath. 



Borrowing a favourite horse, and 
returning it to the lender with broken 
knees. 

Ditto, the feelings of the owner, 

A young man, much addicted to 
snuff, in a smart party, suddenly 
starting from his chair to take an 



MORE MISERIES. U9 

empty cup from a lady, and dropping 
the attenuated secretion of his nose 
upon her beautiful white muslin gown. 



A man whom you have only seen 
twice, and know nothing of, who 
perspires very much in the head, bor- 
rowing your pocket comb. 

■ The hanging committee of the ex- 
hibition, or committee of arrangement, 
placing a young artist's favourite pro- 
duction in a wrong light. 

Cutting your nails to the quick. 

Losing your shoe in the midst of a 
chace. 

h 3 



150 MORE MISERIES. 

After having related to a company, 
a piece of intelligence which you 
thought was only known to yourself, 
finding that they had been talking 
about it half an hour previous to 
your entrance, though they were too 
polite to interrupt you in the relation 
of it. 

Putting a blister plaister by mis- 
take to a broken shin. 

At billiards, missing the cue when 
you had the game in your hands. 

Going into the country to a friend, 
and finding the great wash going on, 
and lines crossjng the shrubberies, 



MORE MISERIES. 151 

coveted with chemises, sheets, stock- 
ings, &c. 

A nervous man upon going to visit 
a surgeon, being shown into his 

anatomicalm useum. 

Riding a horse in a hilly country 
in a hot day, and being obliged to 
get off every ten minutes to put the 
saddle backwards. 

Travelling in a very mountainous 
country, with a horse so weak, that 
you lead him up the hills for fear of 
killing him> and down for fear of his 

killing you, 

h4 



152 MORE MISERIES. 

Extinguishing the candle at a 
friend's house, feeling your way to 
the bed, passing the bed post with 
both hands, and striking your nose 
against it. 

Turning a corner, being smothered 
by a gritty cloud following the first 
lusty strokes bestowed upon a filthy 
carpet. 

Losing all the gold out of a hole in 
your waistcoat pocket, and finding 
the aperture when you put your hand 
in, stopped up by a half crown. 

Not being able to relieve a lady 
from her empty cup, by reason of 



MORE MISERIES. 153 

having a hot full cup in your -hand, 
which you are afraid of spilling. 

Ascertaining after a week's unre- 
mitting agony, that you must have 
your tooth out. 

Going by the Gravesend boat — 
Newspaper wrong in the tide, by two 
hours. 

Washing your face in the winter ', 
chamber-maid having forgotten to 
put a towel in your room, bell injured 
and useless. 

Stepping from the foot path, into 
the road, the same appearing durable, 



15* MORE MISERIES. 

but proving to be villainous undried 
mud. 



Rising up too suddenly under a 
large chimney piece, after having 
carefully brushed the hearth. 

Paying at the theatre in a hurry 
and being obliged to change a bad 
shilling. 



MORE MISERIES. 155 

LETTER X. 

Fen-Lodge. 

A ridiculous circumstance oc- 
cured in our Town, the other day, my dear 
Whimble : a celebrated Philosopher applied to 
our Mayor, for permission to use the Ball 
Room in the Guildhall to deliver a course of 
experimental lectures on Natural Philosophy, 
to which the sapient Magistrate with great dig- 
nity replied, that he would on no account, lend 
the room to any of them mathematical vagabonds, 
to have it filled with a parcel of gim-cracfo and 
rattle-traps, alluding to the philosophical appa- 
ratus of the learned applicant. 

Dorothea in her last letter, says that she is 
promised a sight of the Prince's stables, which 
I am told do infinite honour to the genius ana 



h56 MORE MISERIES. 

taste of the Architect Mr. Porden.— She made 
me smile by telling me with her accustomed 
credulity, that each horse has a Persian carpet 
to stand upon during the day, and a large 
mirror to see himself in, fastened over the crib. 
I suppose this is the silly prevailing notion. If 
she had been told that the horses wore pattens, 
when they were aired in dirty weather, to pre- 
vent them from catching cold, I dare say she 
would believe it. She has cut the emerald Gen- 
tleman I find, on account of his eccentricities. 
A thousand thanks for Knight's Enquiry into the 
Principles of Taste, it is an admirable pro- 
duction. VollaMORE MISERIES. 

Ever yours 

F. MURMUR; 



Not being agile, or learned in the 



MORE MISERIES. 157 

law of projectiles, to avoid having your 
hat knocked into the gutter by a sugar 
loaf being tossed from a cart into a 
grocer's shop across the pavement. 

At supper being placed at a separate 
table from the girl of your heart, trying 
to catch a glance, but always baffled 
by a provokingly intervening turban 
or cloud of feathers. 

Bursting your black silk breeches 
as you are playing at forfeits, and 
kneeling to a lady to call them. 

Relating a disgraceful story of a 
man, his friend sitting immediately 
opposite to you. 



158 MORE MISERIES. 

The miseries of a very large lady 
upon being told that she has got very 
fat, after she had supposed herself 
much reduced in size, in consequence 
of having screwed herself into a pair of 
Mrs. Bailey^s stays. 

Going into a china shop to lay out 
a few shillings, and overturning a com- 
plete set of very elegant china. 

Knocking at a door with a muffled 
knocker. — No bell. 

Getting up at church before your 
time. 

In a fruit shop in London, ignorantly 



MORE MISERIES, 159 

eating strawberries at one shilling 
a-piece. 

A subscription at church, not a shil- 
ling in your pocket, a crouded pew. 

Receiving eleven pence in halfpence 
in change at a penny turnpike, every 
one of which is refused at the next 
turnpike, a penny one also. 

Going into church when the service 
is half over, and being unable to open 
the pew door. 

Endeavouring to laugh with your 
companions at an accident which still 
gives you excruciating pain. 



\ 



160 MORE MISERIES 

Being followed by your terrier into 
a drawing room and before you can 
stop him, seeing him kill the tor- 
toiseshell cat belonging to the lady of 
the house, who notwithstanding every 
explanation persists in thinking that 
you brought the dog for that express 
purpose. 

Dreaming that you have wings and 
waking with a fit of the gout. 

Dreaming in your after noon*s nap 
that you have obtained a large prize 
in the lottery and being rouzed from 
your reverie, by your servant deliver- 
ing to you, a filthy, ragged, petition 
for charity ♦ 



MORE MISERIES. 161 

Pointing out at a dance to your 
beautiful partner, the ludicrous vul- 
garity of a man, whom she blushingly 
informs you, is her brother. 

Being seized with a bleeding of the 
nose, just as you have seated yourself 
by the charming girl, whom you have 
been waiting with the utmost anxiety 
to speak to. 

The top of your tea-pot suddenly 
slipping off while you are cautiously 
dribbling its scanty contents into your 
cup. 

Springing up in a pew in the midst 
of the Litany in a fit of the cramp. 



162 MORE MISERIES. 

In snuffing the candle catching the 
wick too low, and pulling the candle 
from the socket. 

Being tempted to bathe in a roman- 
tic secluded spot on the sea-coast, find- 
ing on your return that the tide has 
come in faster than you have expected, 
and has irrevocably washed away all 
your cloaths. 

In looking over Blackfriars Bridge 
at a boat, dropping your hat. 

Walking in clean leather breeches 
down Ludgate Hill, meeting a flock 
of sheep, which have been driven 
twenty miles in a muddy road, one of 



MORE MISERIES. 163 

which being pursued by the sheep dog, 
runs between your legs. 

After being entreated by a large 
party to play and sing, complying 
with their request, and soon after 
being scarcely able to hear your own 
voice for the noisy prattle of the whole 
circle. 

Taking charge of a very small par- 
cel, which your friend would entrust 
to no other person ; perpetually and 
nervously fumbling in your pocket to 
see whether it is there, and uncon- 
sciously drawing it out, and leaving it 
in the last chaise* and discovering 
the loss after a sound nap. 



164 MORE MISERIES; 

A favourite dog in the mange. 

Being told by a friend that a review, 
the name of which he has forgotten, 
contains a handsome critique upon a 
book, which you have written, going 
into a bookseller's shop, and taking 
up a review in which you find yourself 
unmercifully abused. 

After inveighing against red noses* 
discovering that the lady who sits next 
to you has a very rubicurd one. 

Walking hard in hot a day meeting a 
ceremonious friend and not being able 
to get off your glove when he takes 
his off 



MORE MISERIES. 165 

Being told that a worthless old wo- 
man, from whom you expect a com- 
fortable independence, is rapidly re- 
covering from a violent and very pro- 
mising attack of the asthma. 



'o 



Sitting on a chair which a servant 
has fractured and put together the 
preceding morning, and upon at- 
tempting to lean back, falling to the 
ground before a large party. A coun- 
try servant bursting into a roar of 
laughter. 

Hot day — dusty road— long walk — 
tender feet— new shoes. 

Whirling the cork off your float as 



166 MORE MISERIES. 

you swing it into the water, and seeing 
it quietly sink with the bait to the 
bottom. 

Ditto catching your line in a tree. 

In erecting yourself at a dance, 
bursting your braces, and your shirt 
appearing between your waistcoat 
and breeches. 

After a shower, sinking up to your 
ankles in mould, to gather a rose at 
the request of a favourite lady. 

Talking loudly with a lady in a gig 
to prevent her noticing the unpleasant 
effects from the horse having eaten 
beans. 



MORE MISERIES. \ 67 

On a journey, both straps of your 
gaiters bursting, in bad weather. No 
boots. 



168 MORE MISERIES. 



LETTER XI. 



Fet2-Lodge 9 



Mr. and Mrs. Debit are just re- 
turned to town : do my dear Whimble call upon 
them, modernize them, and put them a little 
in the right way of things, otherwise I shall dread 
looking into the Morning Post. 

Mrs. Debit informs me, that she was taken 
by our cousin, old Lady Betty Worms, to a 
lotanical lecture, at the Institute in Albemarle 
Street, I send you an extract from her letter. 
" I never attended any thing so vile and abo- 

t€ minable in all my life. 1 had no idea that 

t€ there was so much wickedness going on in 
*• the world, will you believe it brother? the 
" flowers make love worse than we do, I blush 
u whilst I write, and nothing can exceed the 



MORE MISERIES. 169 

" filthy and abominable disposition of the grass, 
" that grass we always thought so innocent and 
*• wholesome, yes, the grass is more amorous, 
" as well as I could learn from the Lecturer, 
w than the goats ; not that I know any thing 
" about the filthy animal, only I remember 
" that Thomas told me one day when I was 
" riding behind him, and saw a pair of them, 
" that they are always viciously inclined. 

" This lecture is always crowded. Every seat 
" was crammed to the very top — there were only 
" five Gentlemen present, and such was the 
" silence, that you might have heard any of the 
" flowers which the Lecturer held in his hand 
" drop. If I could have got out before it was 
" over, I certainly would, but as I was there, 
" I thought I might as well stay, and not make 
11 a bustle. 

cc I am sorry I took Eliza with me, she is 

f 



170 MORE MISERIES. 

M grown a fine young woman, but she kept 
" gigling all the time, although I spoke to her 
" frequently. I wonder the Society for the 
" Suppression of Vice, does not inform against 
" all botanical lectures: if these abominations 
u are suffered brother, it is no wonder that the 
94 French are permitted to beat the Germans." 
So much for the prudish mind and just judg- 
ments of my poor addle-headed sister. I have 
a curious fracas which happened in our village, 

to tell you in my next. 1 accompany More 

Miseries with a brace of Partridges. — If you 
make game of the former, they will not be ill 
associated. 

Ever yours, 

F. MURMUR. 



Losing a considerable sum at vingt- 



MORE MISERIES. 171 

un expecting to repair your loss by 
your deal, and being put out the first 
round. 

In shuffling, a split card always 
acting as a case to its neighbouring 
card, to the infinite interruption of 
the shuffle. 

Being only five feet, four inches, 
going to see a new play every part 
of the house crammed, standing upon 
the tips of your toes, and only getting 
partial peeps at the stage through the 
misty glass in the door of a lower box, 
as a large pomatumed head lolls on 
one side, and not being able to hear 
one word. 



172 MORE MISERIES. 

Sitting clown to play a rubber of 
whist, only one pack, and that short of 
its complement by three cards. 

One of the aces so terribly soiled 
that every one can tell who has it. 

Travelling in ill health in bad wea- 
ther, arriving at the inn and ex- 
pecting to be refreshed by a comfort- 
able dinner being informed that they 
have nothing in the house, but that 
they have just killed a pig. 

Crossing an iron railway. 

After having carefully finished the 
outline of a drawing discovering in the 



MORE MISERIES. 173 

first application of the brush that you 
have been using blotting paper in dis- 
guise. 

Looking at an eclipse till you get a 
crick in the neck. 

Coming home late at night to cham- 
bers from a ball, finding your servant 
has absconded, and all the lamps on 
the staircases out. 

Discovering upon entering a drawing 
room by the disagreeable expression 
on the countenance of the party, that 
you have not been sufficiently care- 
ful either in walking, or wiping your 
shoes. 



174 MORE MISERIES. 

Having caught a large perch prick* 
ing your hands with dorsal fin in at- 
tempting to disengage him from the 
hook, the fish ultimately escaping. 

At the moment you are going to 
give check mate you awkwardly over- 
turn the board- --To add to your mor- 
tification you lose the next game. 

Having a suspicion that your neigh- 
bours have purloined your turnips, 
hanging your horse at the gate, while 
you ascertain the truth of your conjec- 
tures, and upon your return finding 
that your horse has been made away 
with in your absence. 



ft* to* 30 



MORE MISERIES. 175 

Going to spend a few days with a 
quisical family in the country, and 
before you return, write an account 
of their eccentricities to your friend 
in London, and recollect when you 
have quitted the house, that you 
have left the copy of the letter upon 
your dressing table. 

Turning your drawers inside out 
in looking for a waistcoat, which you 
at length discover you have had on 
for the last half hour. 

Being obliged to kiss a remarkably 
plain woman at forfeits, when you 
engaged in the pastime only with the 
hope of being enabled to salute a 



176 MORE MISERIES. 

lovely young lady to whom you are 
particularly attached. 



P. S. My dear JVhimble I feel I 
have a jit of the gout coming on y and 
I can copy no more Miseries for you at 
present., — Adieu. 

IN THE PRESS, 

THE 

COMFORTS 

OF 

HUMAJV LIFE. 

To be Printed uniformly with More 

Miseries, and embellished with 
a Curious Frontispiece, elegantly 
Coloured. 

Clowes, Printer, Yilliers'-street.' 



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